


Golden Eyes

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Broken Bond, Gen, Preemptive Strike, Sith Obi-Wan, Suicide, Unhappy Ending, With New Chapter 2 Now a Bittersweet Ending, hopelessness, lying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-07 16:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11627127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning
Summary: Obi-Wan has a choice to make, and chooses based on the information he has at the time.But he's not the one who's going to have to live with it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Courtesy Note for Qui-Gon Fans: This story does not paint him in a particularly kind light. He means no harm, but that is not how it's interpreted by others, and we do not see it from Qui-Gon's POV until too late.

 

Qui-Gon lay on the hard floor, his wound burning, his vision flickering in and out.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed before Obi-Wan bent over him, toiling, pouring his soul into healing—

“Obi-Wan—”

Eyes remained tight shut, refusing to open.

Before Qui-Gon could gather the strength to attempt speaking again, he passed out.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan stood before the Council members who had rushed to Naboo upon hearing of Qui-Gon's wounding, keenly aware of his eyes.

They burned in his skull, and he knew his face was marked by the tears he'd shed.

He'd managed to hide them from Qui-Gon, but he had no interest in hiding them here.

“Hope for you, there still is.”

Obi-Wan did not reply.

Windu spoke into the grief-filled silence. “We've reviewed the security footage. You did not commit murder, Obi-Wan. It was honest battle, and you were fighting for your life. You have broken no laws. And Master Yoda is right, you are not so far gone that you cannot find your way back.”  
_It would require many more years with Qui-Gon. To transition training bonds from one master to another now..._

_If I did, I don't think I could hold my light._

He could barely find it as it was. To so upheave his soul...

_But if Qui-Gon is trapped with me, he will not get to train Anakin. And he wants Anakin so much._

“We could knight him,” Adi Gallia spoke up.

Obi-Wan stared at her in horror. “I have not  _earned_ it.  _No._ ”

“What are you going to do?” Windu asked, watching Obi-Wan with pleading eyes.

“I must leave. I cannot stay. I must distance myself from the Force. I will still try to do good, but— the Force is no longer a sanctuary for me. My time with it is over.”  
Yoda heaved a brokenhearted sigh. “So be it, if believe that you do.”

“I do.” There was such broken honesty spilling through his soul that none of the Council members could help but see it. “I am sorry.”  
_I had my chance. Anakin deserves an opportunity._

“We release you from your oaths,” Windu murmured, his voice that of one burying a friend. “May you find peace in your path, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan bowed. “Thank you.” He wrapped his braid around his fist with the intent of tearing it from his head, but Windu sprang forward, preventing it with swift fingers. In a moment the Jedi had cut it.

Obi-Wan almost regretted being stopped. The constant pain would have been something welcomed. Deserved.

“Do you wish to keep it?”

“No. Thank you. Do with it as you see fit.”

“Tell Qui-Gon yourself, will you?”  
“Yes, Master Yoda. I will do that immediately, and then I will leave.”  
Windu gave a grim nod as he took the braid from Obi-Wan's hand. “You will not go empty-handed.”

Obi-Wan only gave a wan smile.

He walked away, back to Qui-Gon's side after a small detour, and sat there until his former master stirred, squinting his eyes open.

“Hey.” Obi-Wan leaned over him.

Qui-Gon mumbled something that sounded like a garbled greeting. And then his eyes settled on Obi-Wan's shoulder. “Braid?”  
“I wish you could have cut it,” Obi-Wan murmured. “But there is no time. We have to hunt down the leads left by the Sith before they go cold. The Council has knighted me, and because I'm the only one who's actually interacted with the Sith, I'm their only option.”

Qui-Gon frowned. “So soon...”  
“I'm going to be going deep undercover,” Obi-Wan warned. “Months. Years, possibly. I won't be able to contact you, and I shouldn't even be here now. All of this is classified beyond belief. The Council would be furious.”  
Qui-Gon grimaced. “Be safe.”  
“Of course.” Obi-Wan leaned over, pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “I want you to be well by the time I get back. Take good care of Anakin. We should finish closing our training bond now.” The painful part had already happened, had been done in the Council chamber when Qui-Gon renounced him for Anakin. There would be no physical pain this time. “I will have to go silent when I'm undercover, so the Sith won't sense me. I'll need you to not try to contact me through the Force, and to help me keep everything closed down.”

“Help any way I can,” Qui-Gon mumbled. “My Knight.”  
Obi-Wan gave him a tender smile.

Qui-Gon was asleep again when Obi-Wan slipped out of the room.

The instant he turned the corner, the facade fell away.

_You could not survive another Xanatos, my Master. You were right, so long ago. There_ is  _darkness inside me, and I can either fight it until I lose, destroy Anakin's future, cripple yours, not salvage my own... end up killing people I now consider family, the way Xanatos did..._

_Or I can minimize the damage._

He pulled the blue droptacs from his eyes, and accepted that the pain would never leave. It was a good thing Qui-Gon hadn't looked too closely, to see the blue of Obi-Wan's eyes was just a little off.

Handy, then, that Qui-Gon hadn't really looked at Obi-Wan since he'd discovered Anakin.

Obi-Wan accepted the small ship from Windu with gratitude, trying to reject the credits—

But he insisted.

So Obi-Wan accepted.

He boarded the ship, escaped Naboo, fled to the stars.

And then, far away from them all, he moved to the life support systems and considered.

If he suddenly vanished, Qui-Gon would know.

He needed to not know for as long as possible.

_Falling asleep, then._

Obi-Wan fiddled with the dials and killed alarms, allowing the ship to fill with an odorless vapor that would do the trick.

He sat on the floor, closed his eyes, and let the tears have their silent way.

He'd only ever wanted to be a Jedi.

He'd only ever wanted to please Qui-Gon Jinn.

He'd only ever wanted—

_Xanatos did not lose it in a day._

Obi-Wan doubted that such a descent would offer many chances of escaping that road.  _And those that do appear, soon I won't want to take. I have to act now, before I lose myself completely._

Before  _he_ was the one trying to murder Anakin Skywalker, the way Xanatos had come after him.

_He deserves a chance._

Obi-Wan's eyelids drifted shut.

He embraced the exhaustion, the bone-deep sorrow.

And he didn't allow himself to think the word  _goodbye,_ lest it filter through the cold and empty bond.

 

* * *

 

It had been a year.

Qui-Gon knew he wasn't supposed to  _know_ about Obi-Wan's classified mission, but he missed his knight. Surely it couldn't hurt to ask if they'd heard from him recently.

But when he approached Windu about it, his friend shook his head. “We have not heard from him.”

“Do we have any idea of when his mission will be complete?” Qui-Gon asked, feeling wistful, needy—

Windu sent him odd look. “He has not confided anything in me.”

“Why aren't you more concerned? There must be protocols for knowing what's going on.”

“We are not spying on him, Qui-Gon. He may no longer be with us, but that does not mean he will become a monster by default.”

Qui-Gon blinked, now utterly baffled. “What are you  _talking_ about?”

“What are  _you_ talking about?”

“The secret mission the Council sent him on, to track down leads concerning the Sith!”

“We sent him on no mission,” Windu replied, stunned. “He renounced his oaths and left the Order.”

Qui-Gon's heart froze in his chest. “No. You knighted him.”  
“He left, Qui-Gon. I'm sorry. He lied to you?”

“We have to find him.” The urgency and dread in Qui-Gon's voice found a mirror in Windu's face.

“We gave him a ship. He could be anywhere.”  
Qui-Gon ran a hand over his hair in growing distress. “Can you track it?”

“I suppose. A tech might be able to convince the locator to ping, long-distance...”

“Do it.” Qui-Gon opened a bond long silent to try to contact his former Padawan.

At the end of the cold corridor he found—

Dimly he heard his own scream, from a great distance he felt pain in his knees as he fell.

The bond was twisted and broken, the soul it had once tethered long gone.

_He is dead._

Dear Force, he was dead, and—

_I didn't know._

 

* * *

 

They found the ship drifting just a small jump away from Naboo.

It had run out of fuel long ago, leaving nothing in the way of life support.

Mace and Qui-Gon dressed in protective gear and gained entry to the silent ship.

They found Obi-Wan sitting on the floor, back to the wall, head hanging.

His body was only partially decomposed, since once life support ran out everything in the ship froze.

Qui-Gon knelt before the dead one in silent horror.

_He's been here, alone, dead, for a year, and I never noticed._

He reached out to touch the frayed ends of where the now-severed braid used to hang.

The movement activated a small disk on the floor.

His Padawan, tiny and blue, wavered into existence.

_“If you did not run tox screens on the ship before you entered, get out, Master. Irondiex is in the air.”_

Qui-Gon swallowed hard against the terrible squeezing in his throat.

_“So, yes. I did that. But I didn't damage the ship's coolant system, I just adjusted the dials, so Master Windu can have his ship back.”_ Obi-Wan gave a wry smile that quickly faded. _“I will not suffer. I won't even know when the moment comes. I'm sorry, Qui-Gon. I wanted to be the one you could be proud of.”_ Obi-Wan's voice caught with a shiver.  _“That will fall to Anakin.”_

Horror flooded Qui-Gon as he realized what Obi-Wan was saying.  _As opposed to Feemor or Xanatos?_

_“I will not make you watch me slowly corrupt into something like Xanatos. I will not kill my fellow Jedi. Master, name one Jedi who has turned who has_ not  _killed. I refuse to value my life more than all of yours, and to claim I could be poisoned by this and not succumb would be an arrogance that would cost others their lives. Goodbye, my Master. Find happiness with him.”_

And then even that echo of Obi-Wan was gone.

“Why wouldn't he let me  _help him_ ?” Qui-Gon asked, clutching the holodisc close. “How could he— to feel so  _hopeless—_ ”

A hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing in sympathy.

“I don't understand,” Qui-Gon whispered. “I  _was_ proud of him. I—”

“Come. Let us give him his final rites, return him to the Temple to rest there with the heroes of the past.”

Qui-Gon turned his head in the direction of the voice, “I would have embraced him.”

“I think he knew that, Qui-Gon.”

“I would have stood by him. I can't— Mace, I  _can't._ ”  
Windu crouched beside him, reaching out to touch the corpse's cheek. “You're right,” he said, voice heavy with grief. “You can't help this boy anymore. But there is a boy back home you can still help.”

Tears flooded Qui-Gon's eyes. “What is wrong with me, Mace, that I would lose  _two_ to darkness and suicide?”

“There are two that haven't. Are they as important as your losses?”

Qui-Gon felt the subtle edge of reproach and gave a grave nod in response.

_I let my grief and guilt over Xanatos cripple me with you, precious Obi-Wan. I will not let the same happen to Anakin over you. And perhaps it's time I reach out to Feemor again._

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blame this on bookworm83197. All of it. They said the phrase “...Is it too much to presume that Obi-Wan is a tiny ball of Force-Ghost hurt somewhere because he feels like he doesn't deserve to let go?” and all the brain sparkles screamed “JOY!” and raced to the scene.

 

Qui-Gon Jinn wasn't certain what he'd expected from death, but _quiet_ hadn't been on the list.

Mustafar had been so loud, the crackling of lava, the hiss of his boots burning where they touched the overheated ground, the insane screaming of his former Padawan.

_Whom I failed to stop._

The boy had been too powerful. Too skilled.

_More than my match._

The universe was going to have to fight for itself, struggle against a Sith the likes of which had never been seen in all of history before.

Qui-Gon wasn't entirely sure he was  _sorry_ to have missed seeing it. 

The future looked to be hell.

He inspected his surroundings, wondering why everything looked fuzzy and indistinct.

Could that be the physical world, just out of reach? Or could these be the features of an afterlife?  _Or_ perhaps they were small variations in the Force itself, and he was seeing what the Force  _looked_ like.

_Or this is just one long hallucination before death, an infinite moment, and soon everything will just cease to be._

That was a vaguely unsettling thought.

_I'm dead, but I'm still waiting for the hammer to drop?_

That seemed like a lousy way to opposite-of-live.

Something was nearby, shivering, rocking. It was just a vague collection of mist, but as Qui-Gon focused on it, it seemed to take form as a young man, curled up on the ground, his agony flooding the Force around them.

Qui-Gon hurried over to him, not quite certain how he moved, but far more interested in alleviating the suffering of the new person.

He reached out to touch the young man's apparent shoulder, and knew in an instant who it was, the same instant that the head snapped up, wide golden eyes staring up at him.

“Obi-Wan,” he murmured.

Horror spilled through those eyes. “ _No,_ ” Obi-Wan choked. “Please, no, tell me you're not here— tell me I've finally gone mad—”

“It's alright, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon soothed. “I'm not sorry to be here. I lived a full life, and to be honest, there's very little to stick around out there for now.”

Not with a  _third_ fallen student.

Was it ironic that it was a fallen student who had murdered him?

“How long?” Obi-Wan asked, voice hoarse. “How long have I been here?”

“Thirteen years.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “You're not here for me.”

“No, Obi-Wan. I wouldn't have done that to you, or to Anakin.”  
“Did you love him?” Obi-Wan asked, sounding wistful.

Pain choked Qui-Gon's throat. “Very much. It hurt terribly when he fell to darkness and killed me.”

Obi-Wan's eyes widened and an injured whimper escaped him. “ _What?_ ” And then relief spilled across his features. “At least it wasn't me,” he murmured.

Qui-Gon gathered him close in his arms. “It was  _stupid,_ Obi-Wan,  _stupid_ what you did.”

“I—”

“Do you have any idea how much I  _missed_ you?”

“Master—”

“How every day I wished I could have had just  _thirty seconds more_ to convince you to give me another chance, to just give me  _one more chance—_ ”

Obi-Wan squirmed so he could see his eyes. “Give  _you_ a chance? What are you talking about?”

“You didn't believe I would help you.”

“ _No,_ ” Obi-Wan protested. “I feared you  _would,_ that I would destroy you.”

Qui-Gon kissed the top of his head and cradled him close. “Why are your eyes still yellow?”

“I—”

“There is no darkness here, in you, I can  _sense_ that,” Qui-Gon murmured. “Only the best of you remains, so  _why_ are your eyes still yellow?”

“I can't— I don't deserve rest. I hurt you. I knew I was going to hurt you. I knew you would hate yourself for what I did, but I  _couldn't,_ Master. What I did was terrible, and I don't deserve peace.”

“Oh, my Padawan,” Qui-Gon sighed, feeling tears burn in his eyes and throat. “You fought, and you lost your fight. None of us hated you for that. We grieved for you, that you chose to fight alone.”

Obi-Wan pressed closer to him, shuddering.

“But I understand. You aren't the only one who chose to fight alone when you should have reached out for help.  _I_ ran ahead, to fight Maul, when I should have waited for you. And if you feel you must lay blame... it was that which drove you so far from the arms of the light.”

“Master.” Obi-Wan clung to him. “No. It most certainly is not your fault.”

“Fault is a little bit pointless here,” Qui-Gon murmured. “I suspect it was a bit pointless on the living side of things too.”

“Can you forgive me?”

Qui-Gon pulled back so he could see the quivering fear and desperation in his loved Padawan's expression. “For Falling, or for refusing to try another option before coming  _here_ ?”

“Both. Either. Neither. Master, I've been so lonely for so long.” His voice disappeared into a sob.

Qui-Gon touched his cheek with careful fingers. “Can't you feel the tug?”

“Yes. It's been calling me to sleep, but I don't deserve it.”

“It's not about deserving, Obi-Wan. It's about not clinging to the wrongs of the past— those we've committed, or those others have done against us. It's about accepting this moment, this silence, this love.”

“I'm afraid that it won't work.”

Qui-Gon smiled, took his hand, and maneuvered them so they lay side-by-side, hands still held. “I forgive you. Now take a deep breath, and for a moment, don't look at what you've done. Instead, look at me.”  
Obi-Wan obeyed, but clearly didn't understand.

“I'm here with you again. You are not lonely right this second. You cannot harm anyone; they cannot harm you. We are safe. There is nothing demanding we be elsewhere; we can just rest here and breathe.”

An edge of blue fractured through the gold of Obi-Wan's eyes.

“You have been clinging to regret. That is not the Jedi way, is it, my Padawan? What  _is_ ?”

“Acknowledge your mistake or fault, then step forward to embrace the future.”

“The Force wants to take us home.”

Obi-Wan's fingers tightened around his. “I'm still afraid.”

“You need not be. You will find it strangely familiar. And above all, you will find peace.”

“But I don't want to leave you.”

“We need not go immediately.” Qui-Gon sent him a quiet, reassuring smile. “We can wait and talk. Or wait and simply exist together. But at some point, we will let the Force take back what it gave in the first place, and it will be warm and gentle, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan cuddled up against his side, eyelids falling closed. “I've missed you so much, Master.”

“And I, you, Obi-Wan.” Qui-Gon wrapped his arm around his child and thanked the Force for guiding him back to his lost son.

 

 


End file.
